4 ms·
Lasers are terrible examples, they were invented in the 60s and an absolute upper bound on their introduction into the consumer market is 1982.
by GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
Lasers are terrible examples, they were invented in the 60s and an absolute upper bound on their introduction into the consumer market is 1982.
- maxerickson 11y agoThey stand on theory that started to come together ~1900.
- DougMerritt 11y agoTo be more specific: > Albert Einstein first broached the possibility of stimulated emission in a 1917 paper http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200508/history.cfm http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200508/history.cfm
- mannykannot 11y agoYou need more than stimulated emission for a laser. I think that figuring out how to create a population inversion in an excited state is the best candidate for the inception point of the laser as a specific possibility, and I believe the honor for that achievement goes to Townes circa 1950.
- DougMerritt 11y agoNothing is ever simple. Before Townes' 1951 population inversion, there's also Kastler's 1950 invention of optical pumping, and Dennis Gabor's 1947 invention of holography (yes, 1947, before lasers, which stimulated development of lasers) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_pumping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_pumping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Gabor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Gabor
- mannykannot 11y agoInteresting. On following up on your links, I see that while optical pumping was invented first, Townes was able to make the first maser by using an electric field to separate out an excited state of ammonia, achieving a population inversion without pumping. http://home.fnal.gov/~kubik/FermilabWebsiteDocs/Masers.ppt http://home.fnal.gov/~kubik/FermilabWebsiteDocs/Masers.ppt The closer you look, the less the history of innovation looks like a simple sequence.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y agoIf you're gonna be that way, you could have said that they date back to Newton and the prism. "Lasers? yeah, the theory dates back to the first micro-organism with a photo-sensitive organelle. Took a little while to put it together tho. '
- maxerickson 11y agoI don't think I'm being "that way", I think that's more or less the meaning of theory used in the quote. There is a pretty straight line between lasers and the photoelectric effect.
- DougMerritt 11y ago> There is a pretty straight line I strongly disagree, and that gives very little credit to the various brilliant people involved in the various stages of the history. Everything seems obvious in retrospect. But it doesn't change the timeline very significantly, so it's a side issue.
- maxerickson 11y agoI don't understand it well enough to call any of it obvious. My meaning was more that it was foundational, not that the stuff that built from it was obvious (fortunately I drew my straight line backwards, not forwards)